Turtle Island is the name for Earth or North America in many native cultures, the story being that Muskrat brought earth from the bottom of the ocean and put it on the back of a turtle until the dirt became so great that it formed land and life flourished upon it.
Monkman states that “In The Deluge, an allegorical flood of settler cultures displaces Indigenous people from the lands to which they belong. Despite the many losses and adversity caused by dispossession, the resilience of the original people of Turtle Island and their connection to their cultures has endured. The ancestors reach down to pull Miss Chief Eagle Testickle and two children up to safety.”
